hundred years, and lasted until Genghis Khan and Tamerlane successively brought it under Mogul domination. The succeeding wars with Afghans, Turks, and Russians need not here be detailed. The two great religious revolutions were occasioned by the adoption of the doctrines of Zoroaster and Mohammed. The first of these appears to have suddenly emerged from the comparative obscurity of the court of Bactria--a country situated upon the eastern confines of ancient Persia--and to have led the Persians to renounce their gross idolatry. The leading tenets of his creed were the existence of a supreme being, eternity, and the contending principles Ormuzd and Ahriman, good symbolized by light and evil by darkness. The never-ceasing contention between these two opposite principles is often represented by a bull and a lion in conflict. The cypress was Zoroaster’s emblem. This religion took a deep hold upon the Persians, and the first serious shock which it sustained was from the religion founded by Mohammed in the wilds of Arabia Petræa. Of the two Mussulman sects, Schiites and Sunnites, created by the dissensions following upon the Prophet’s death, as to the choice of a successor, the Persians preferred the former, and are believers in Ali. The Turks, on the other hand, are Sunnites, believers in the legitimate succession of Abubeker, Omar, and Osman. Propagandism by the help of the sword being the privilege and virtue of the believers in the Prophet, it is not astonishing that Turk and Persian should have met in the argument of battle. Coming next to the geographical position of Persia, it intercepted, in its ancient extent, all communication between East and West. The vast extent of territory owning its sway, stretching nearly three thousand miles east and west, and two thousand miles north and south, must needs be traversed by travellers between Europe and the extreme East. Long before navigators had found the ocean highway round the Cape, Persia received all the traffic from India, China, and Japan passing through the Persian Gulf to Europe.